Cavalcade of Volkswagen Vans en route to Mariposa
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Don’t be surprised if you experience a flashback to another era at Mariposa Folk Festival this year. With music icons that defined a generation like Arlo Guthrie, Randy Bachman and Murray McLauchlan setting the mood, it would be easy to let you mind drift back to an earlier time. But, when you see the large collection of Volkswagen Vans camping at the Festival site this year, you’re bound to think you’ve stepped back in time, by three or four decades.
During the past few years, the number of VW Van owners at Mariposa Folk Festival has been growing, but this year the Festival is expecting a lot more now that smaller recreational vehicles are allowed to camp at the festival. Expectations are especially high since owners of Volkswagen Westfalia Vans, ‘westies’ as they fondly call them, are organizing. They plan to descend on Mariposa Folk Festival in numbers, and they have even set up a Facebook event called Busses at Mariposa to enlist more recruits.
So far, they are expecting vans from New Jersey, Québec, New Brunswick, and from numerous communities across Ontario. Some of these ‘westies’ are vintage vehicles dating from the 1960’s through to the 1980’s. All of them have proud, wandering owners. Some bring their kayaks and paddle out to the point to listen to the great music on Mariposa’s daytime stages while floating on beautiful Lake Couchiching. Several are musicians, so they will make good use of the Hootenanny Stage for campers every night of the festival.
The ‘westie’ owners coming to Mariposa Folk Festival in recent years have made new friendships with fellow ‘westie’ owners. They see each other only once a year, but are building relationships, and catching up on kids, life, and events while sharing their love of music and their vans. With all of the van campers expected at the Festival this year, we’re looking forward to a whole new ‘westie’ era in Mariposa’s storied history.
The instigators behind the ‘westie’ cavalcade are Linda and Doug Alcock of Mississauga, Ontario. They have been coming to Mariposa Folk festival for ten years. Doug is a singer, songwriter and guitar player, and the two of them go to music festivals all over Ontario. According to Linda, “We love Mariposa because it is the biggest and best, it’s a great venue and the lineups are always terrific.” They met Dave Gunning at Mariposa Folk Festival in 2004, and have had him at their home three times since for house concerts.
Once, when Linda and Doug were sitting outside their ‘westie’ at Mariposa Folk Festival, someone came up to Doug to say his performance was really, really good. The problem is, Doug didn’t play at the festival. So, if you see a guy in a beret with a beard and grey curly hair, especially a guy sitting beside a ‘westie’, just so you know, it’s not Ken Whitely. It’s Doug Alcock. Stop by and say hello.
Our food vendors are carefully selected for value, quality and range of choices to give you lots of great options the whole weekend through.
Sunshine BBQ
Black River Food Company
A tradition of the Mariposa Folk Festival is to offer civil society groups, service organizations and community groups a no-charge booth in our Community Village area of the festival. Casino Rama, and their Community Wellness Program, makes this possible through a very generous sponsorship.
Folkplay is a veritable festival-within-a-festival for kids, with lots of quality activities, entertainment and fun times to keep your little folkie engaged and happy.
The Amazing Frank Clarkson
Mariposa Folk Festival is renowned for its wide range of folk/roots artists, with 100+ performances of every kind on its 11 stages including music, dance and spoken word – but there’s lots more than that going on at Mariposa Folk Festival!
Did you know that Mariposa volunteers serve several hundred meals each day to artists and festival guests in the Green Room (tent actually) in the restricted are behind the Main Stage? Most of the preparation is done in donated commercial kitchens, and the food is transported and served at the festival. It takes hundreds of hours of preparation and planning, and great care goes into ensuring the meals are nutritionally balanced and of high quality. Not only that, everything is done to meet the high and exacting standards of Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit. In this photo, volunteers are hard at work in the kitchen of Birchmere On-The-Lake, baking the 5,000 cookies typically consumed during the run of the weekend. The volunteer leading the baking team has a badly fractured arm (you can see the cast in the photo), but that didn’t stop her from getting the job done. This is just one of the many, integral, behind-the-scenes jobs our volunteers do. All told, we have an army of more than 600 volunteers, and each and every one of these great people is essential to putting on a wonderful festival for you to enjoy.
Everyone knows about the really great musical programming at Mariposa Folk Festival, but did you know you can play at the festival too?
Mariposa Folk Festival is a volunteer-driven event. Without hundreds of people donating their time, there would be no festival.
Here is the dynamic creative design of the promotional materials for Mariposa Folk Festival 2013. This look, created by Effigy Design, appears on the poster, rack cards, print advertisements, and souvenir program. Aspects of it are also carried through to Mariposa’s online presence, and to the t-shirts, compilation CD and other Mariposa merchandise that will be available for purchase in the Emporium at the festival. The ‘look’ of the volunteer t-shirts will also be inspired by this design.